Just met the Saudi ambassador to seek urgent answers over Jamal Khashoggi. Violence against journalists worldwide is going up & is a grave threat to freedom of expression. If media reports prove correct, we will treat the incident seriously – friendships depend on shared values.

Taking a tougher line than the Trump administration, a spokesperson for the UK’s Foreign Office said, if media reports surrounding the case were correct, the UK would treat the incident “very seriously.”

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Earlier today, US President Donald Trump said he had not yet spoken to Saudi officials about the journalist’s disappearance.

“I have not. But I will be at some point,” he told reporters. “I know nothing right now. I know what everybody else knows – nothing.”

But after several of his friends were arrested, his column was cancelled by the al-Hayat newspaper and he was allegedly warned to stop tweeting, Mr Khashoggi left Saudi Arabia for the US.

What’s been the reaction to the disappearance?

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on Saudi Arabia to “support a thorough investigation” of his disappearance and “to be transparent about the results”.

UN experts have demanded a “prompt independent and international investigation” into his disappearance.

Last week, Crown Prince Mohammed told Bloomberg News that his government was “very keen to know what happened to him”, and that Mr Khashoggi had left “after a few minutes or one hour”.

An unacceptable line?

Analysis by BBC diplomatic correspondent James Robbins

The UK has apparently told the Saudis they need to show Mr Khashoggi is alive, and the best way to do that would be for him to appear on television.

If that doesn’t happen soon, it’s clear that Britain and its allies are likely to conclude that Saudi Arabia has crossed an unacceptable line.

In the wake of the Salisbury attack, and the international punishment meted out to Russia, it would then be increasingly difficult for Western governments to avoid action against the Saudi kingdom, however close their military and economic ties.

Crown Prince Mohammed’s brother and the Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Khaled bin Salman al-Saud, has insisted all the reports about his disappearance or death “are completely false and baseless”.

“Jamal has many friends in Saudi Arabia, and I am one of them,” he said in a statement, saying the two had kept in touch while he was living abroad “despite differences”.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to go home,” he told the BBC, saying that in Saudi Arabia “the people who are arrested are not even dissidents” and saying he wished he had a platform at home to write and speak freely at this time of “great transformation” in his country.